Exactly. I've even had this happen with things like CSS, where a master stylesheet changes somewhere upstream on another server, and hundreds of hours of my own custom, vendor-supported modifications now make my web application or website look like doo-doo.
Plus maybe I'm weird but I think it's enough to love the energy you can get from building something. It's fun. And considerable portions of work should be fun. Especially if you work for yourself, where building stuff for money, for other people, often isn't enough without a strong connection between the work, customer, and the subject's own interests and values system.
(IMO a lot of those kinds of projects also build on the edge of one's core expertise, extending it outwards, almost like a recon mission, so it's less of a binary yes/no core expertise condition.)
My job involves a lot of integration work so I'm probably biased, but I find successfully cracking open a poorly documented API and extracting all the data in a usable way to be deeply satisfying, especially if you can be confident enough in your edge cases that you think it'll run until the next unannounced and undocumented change comes along.
> I think it's enough to love the energy you can get from building something
I think this is good if you can get there. The IKEA of software is pure dopamine. If had to grow and saw those trees less so. If you are pouring concrete and get it delivered, pure dopamine. If you have to crush the aggregate by hand, less so.
Plus maybe I'm weird but I think it's enough to love the energy you can get from building something. It's fun. And considerable portions of work should be fun. Especially if you work for yourself, where building stuff for money, for other people, often isn't enough without a strong connection between the work, customer, and the subject's own interests and values system.
(IMO a lot of those kinds of projects also build on the edge of one's core expertise, extending it outwards, almost like a recon mission, so it's less of a binary yes/no core expertise condition.)